moonless night
by Measured
Summary: He wove a web with her as the center point, safe from harm. Kaname/Yuuki, spoilers.


Title: moonless night  
Series: Vampire Knight  
Character/Pairing: Kaname/Yuuki  
Rating:  
A/N: comment_fic: Kaname/Yuki, "I will paint you in silver. I will wrap you in cold." The Gauntlet: 7. if there were no moon or snow or fireflies

The poem used is a Geisha song called The Letter. Props to Nyuna for copying it of recent spoilers.

**.**

_"What is it like to be a vampire?,"_ she asked.

She looked up at him, half-grown and undeniably human with human scents and human thoughts. Her innocence was a light, airy thing. She didn't know the dark places, the allies, the nooks and crannies that he had learned. She didn't know of subterfuge or quiet battles held in court.

_"It is all I ever have been,"_ he replied,_ "One cannot judge their existence by any other than what they have experienced."_

She didn't remember, and that was a memory he would kill to prevent resurfacing. It wouldn't even merit a fleeting thought of mortality.

"_But it must feel like something? Doesn't it?"_

He thought long and hard. He didn't want to sully this, sully her with the images of blood or the sharp edges of politics.

_"It is like a long, moonless night,"_ he said finally. It was a rearranged fragment from a poem he'd once read in a moment of solitude.

She tilted her head, querying. _"Is it painful?"_

He shook his head. _"Not precisely."_

_"It's like the poem I read – –Or if there were no moon or snow or fireflies_  
_I would read it by the light of my heart. – There was more, but I forgot."_

He smiled. _"Is that so?"_

She nodded her head vagariously._ "I hope to remember it all soon. Then I can recite it all to you..oniisama."_

_"I'll be looking forward to it."_

She took several steps and tugged on his pants. Her eyes were wide with the unknowing, the lack of realization of his character, and the very nature of his kind.

_"So don't be sad, Oniisama."_

_"I'm not. How can I be with you here?"_

She lifted her smaller hands to his. He spread his hands out, and they met, palm to palm.

_"Then I'll stay here for a long, long, long time to make sure Oniisama is never unhappy."_

_"Forever," _he said. A night as long as death itself, a night eternal.

_"Forever," _she echoed.

**.**

As the cold night approached, cloaks and robes and coats found their way to her bedroom. She will know them by their smell, a too-clean sterile smell that is at the same time Earthy. The smell of death. He picked each one out with care. Vestments fit for a queen.

He wove a web with her as the center point, safe from harm. Here now, Kiryuu was a bolster for her safety. Here now, Shizuka Hou, her body turned to ash. How many lives would hang in these strings? How many in the balance?

The order was meaningless. The only point he cared to focus on was the quiet perfection in the middle. Like newly fallen snow, kept pristine without dirt and footprints to mar the evenness.

**.**

A light sprinkling of snow fell. Winter again. She leaned against the balcony, without Kiryuu for once. There were two bitemarks on her neck, not yet covered up with a plaster and passed aside as a bug bite (an excuse no one will believe.)

He removed the mantle from his shoulders, and placed it over her own.

"You should be inside. Dark nights conceal more than just frostbite."

She wrapped tight it in, and pressed the cloth to her face. She breathed it in, inhaled all the dust and night scents of him that lingered there.

"I remembered the rest of the poem," she said.  
_  
"If there were no moon – I would read it by the Winter snow light, – Or in Summer by the firefli_es."

_Or if there were no moon or snow or fireflies  
I would read it by the light of my heart._

_I don't have a heart to light my way,_ he thought.

_Just you. Only you._

"Let me stay a little longer, please," she said. She looked up at him, entreating. He never could resist her requests, especially when they were made with such lack of artifice.

"Alright. I'll allow you to stay on the condition I escort you back safely in due time."

She smiled into the silvery mantle. "I'd like that."

He stood close behind her. His hands resting a breath away from hers. One slight incline, and his face could be buried in her hair. One step further and she could be in his arms.  
_One more, one more..._

"I'm going to keep my promise," she said.

"And I, mine," he replied.

The snow fell, silent in the air. How much blood would it eventually have to conceal for her sake?

Enough, for that was the only answer to be given. Whatever cost or price it took, it was enough. A fitting price to protect her, to keep this sheltered spot pristine through even the darkest of nights.


End file.
